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Chelsea: Disregard West Ham; you disregard your own history

Human memory is not only short, it is fickle. It is astounding how Chelsea have inveigled themselves into the English psyche as a football dynasty. Four years ago, Chelsea was a middle rung Premiership team, struggling with their finances, with a rather bare trophy room.
Then came Roman Abramovich, and as legend has it, while on a plane, he flew over the Chelsea grounds, observed the empty playing field, and in that serendipitious moment, decided to buy Chelsea. A virtually bankrupt club put up no defence, and it was sold to Abramovich for £60 million by Ken Bates.
For the first time, serious money (over £100 million was spent) was pumped into player acquisition. At that time nobody gave the Blues a chance to succeed, but they did, then taking the runner up spot in 2003. This was not enough for Abramovich and he fired Claudio Rainieri, bringing in Jose Mourinho, and went on another looting spree for players. No amount of money was high enough. In three years, Abramovich has spent over £250 million in buying players. You can buy Arsenal for that amount. It paid off; Chelsea walked off the last two years, with the Premiership title.
Now from all the comments, we hear the same disbelieving noises that West Ham cannot do it, from the same Chelsea fans, a club that was in the doldrums not too long ago. A reality check is in order. Lets put this in context, at this point, Abramovich would never dream of buying out Chelsea, it is far too expensive and over-valued. As for Man U, Liverpool, and Arsenal fans who trot out how little West Ham is, and does not compare to the rich and storied traditions of their clubs with their bursting trophy rooms, let me tell you people like Roman Abramovich and Kia Joorbachian care not one fig about that history. They will tell you that history does not win you future Premiership titles. You can go home, put that in your pipes and smoke it.

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I certainly say good luck to west ham, and thats from a chelsea fan, but to say the blues were a middle rung premiership club is just not true. We’ve consistently finished in the top six since 97, including finishing third and fourth (and winning trophies) before abramovich arrived, and therefore were a leading premiership club, which West Ham have not been.

Which Chelsea fans have said this; I know of none. Also, Chelsea had won the FA Cup (twice) League Cup, UEFA Cup Winners’ Cup and the Super Cup in the five years prior to Abramovich taking over. They had also beaten Liverpool on the last day of the season to qualify for the Champions League (a competition they had already reached the quarter finals of two years previously). West Ham have just won promotion in the last twenty odd years. Good luck to them though I say: it won’t be long before the bias media turns against them.

Steve Greenwood – You CFC fans do have short memories – In the 5 years before Roman took over CFC took a Leeds style gamble (Didn’t Leeds get to the Champions League Semi-Final !!!) and got themselves into a similar problem (I remember the debt being mentioned as £120m). If it wasn’t for Mr Abramovich you would be where Leeds are now. Maybe you should have read Frank Lampards book, before the 2-1 home victory vs liverpool the CFC players were told that if they didn’t qualify for the Champions League then CFC would have to go into administration, which would have meant selling all of the best players …. step in Mr Abramovich.One last thing Steve you didn’t win the UEFA cup it was the Cup Winners Cup !!!!